It’s a gray Saturday. Our granddaughter is sick so we’re hunkered down at home. It’s not serious and she is feeling somewhat better today, and getting bored. That’s a good sign.
I just took a loaf of bread out of the oven and we all enjoyed a warm slice—Makiya’s and mine slathered with butter. Gerry is in the den/snug watching something on TV, Miss M. is downstairs laying down, and I’m here in the living room tapping out words as usual.
I’m working on a new book. There, I’ve said it. The working title is Living Liminal: A Slice of Pandemic Life. While I’m tempted to go all-in on this project, I’m trying to pace myself. I’m poring through journal entries, blog and social media posts, and news stories and, as you can imagine, it’s heavy stuff. Still, it’s my nature to get lost in a work, so it’s challenging to limit the time I work on it.
I’ve been struck by the naivete of early-2020 Linda. She had such hopes that things would return to relative calm in a few weeks or months. In the end, the year was not kind to her and she struggled mightily at times. We all did. At some point, I read that the Spanish Flu pandemic lasted for two years and I couldn’t fathom living in Corona Time that long. Ha! The joke was on me.
It was two years ago yesterday that British Columbia’s Minister of Health, Adrian Dix, and our Provincial Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, held their first joint briefing saying: “The BC Center for Disease Control and provincial and federal authorities are closely monitoring the outbreak of a respiratory illness linked to a novel coronavirus. The risk to British Columbians is considered low.” I guess they were naive too.
The years 2020 and 2021 were no picnic for any of us. I’m hearing rumblings of the situation turning a corner but I won’t go into any of that here lest I look back in a few years’ time and note, again, my misplaced hopefulness. But surely we’re getting close . . .
We’re 57 days away from the first day of spring. Once we can go outside and play in the dirt and watch green things sprout and grow things will look brighter, won’t they? For now, we hunker down, peer through the gray, and look for the light.
I’m backing away from my MacBook now. It’s telling me it needs to be connected to a power source (don’t we all) and it’s getting dark. The dogs are making noises about it being dinner time and Gerry just wandered in thinking about the same. Time to move on.
I’ll pop back in tomorrow.
You have journaled this pandemic so well for us. Your book should be interesting. Will you get into any of the politics, talk about border closing, the US and our naïveté. Just curious.